ECONOMIC growth must be separated from the creation of environmental problems if "sustainable development" is to be achieved, the Taoiseach told a special session of the UN General Assembly yesterday.
Three days before standing down as Taoiseach, Mr Bruton made his first and only address to the UN, though he said he expected to be back.
He is among more than 60 heads of state or government in New York for the special session, called to review progress since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and to reaffirm the commitments made there.
Each leader has been given seven minutes and Mr Bruton was preceded by the Danish Prime Minister. Mr Poul Rasmussen, and followed by the South Korean President, Mr Kim Young Sam.
The Taoiseach said Ireland was experiencing historically high economic growth. But it was the Government's "explicit concern" that this should not compromise the environmental resource base.
"We have recently completed a national sustainable development strategy designed to reinforce the integration of the environment into key economic sectors," he said. But he conceded that achieving it would be a "full time task".
He said the UN special session would also have to take account of the globalisation of the international economy, which had proceeded with "unstoppable momentum" since Rio.
Mr Bruton, accompanied by the Minister for the Environment, Mr Howlin, said action on climate change would be the "critical test" of international cooperation because "it threatens the global environment and demands immediate action".
He did not refer to Ireland's emissions of carbon dioxide, the main culprit in causing climate change, which are already 10 per cent higher than in 1990, largely due to economic growth.
The Taoiseach listed many factors which indicated "accumulating evidence of unsustainable global trends", as did Chancellor Kohl of Germany, President Chirac of France and the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair.
Apart from poverty, lack of access to basic sanitation by half of the world's population, forest and species loss and soil degradation, he noted there were now "enough boats, hooks and nets in the world to catch twice as many fish as there are in the sea".
Quoting the poet John Hewitt, the Taoiseach said each person "has the right to say we shall not be outcast on the world". Thus, sustainable development was also about "combating social exclusion and protecting the environment as a "shared birthright".
